The healthcare industry has traditionally suffered from information fragmentation. Frequently, multiple medical record numbers are assigned to a patient who is cared for by each of several facilities within a multiple facility hospital organization, creating high volumes of duplicate medical record numbers and causing other waste of, e.g. prelabeled folders. Maintaining decentralized or multiple Medical Records Departments within a multientity organization causes additional overhead costs. This practice results in multiple medical record numbers being assigned to a patient who is cared for by several facilities, inevitably causing confusion regarding a patient's medical record data. The workflow of hospital personnel is often less accurate due to the multiple locations of patient medical record information. Impaired access to complete patient information hinders a physician's ability to properly treat the patient.
Numerous attempts have been made to simplify the collection and integration of medical records by a large healthcare provider. One method is to surrender to the multiplicity of records and simply attempt to locate all of them at any given moment. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,998, entitled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MAINTAINING AND UPDATING COMPUTERIZED MEDICAL RECORDS, issued on May 4, 1999 to McGauley et al., discloses a device for collecting the medical record data by having each patient carry a portable data storage device such as a “smart card” which is sensed by various point of service stations distributed around the healthcare facility. U.S. Pat. No. 6,333,690, entitled WIDE AREA MULTIPURPOSE TRACKING SYSTEM, issued on Dec. 25, 2001 to Nelson et al., is also related to locating the medical record by means of a radio transmitter or similar device.
Reliance on a computer database to retrieve inherently fragmented data creates additional problems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,389, entitled MEDICAL RECORD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND PROCESS WITH IMPROVED WORKFLOW FEATURES issued on Oct. 26, 1999 to Clark et al., is related to sharing a computer database, and the problem of preventing simultaneous viewing of medical records by those, such as a pharmacist and a physician, who should be aware of the other's action. Thus, the Clark et al. system insures that records are viewed in a serial fashion. On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 6,347,329, entitled ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS SYSTEM, issued on Feb. 12, 2002 to Evans explicitly permits simultaneous access to fragmented medical records.
Many computer based medical record systems are in fact nothing more than a search engine designed to retrieve multiple, widely dispersed data. U.S. Pat. No. 6,304,848, entitled MEDICAL RECORD FORMING AND STORING APPARATUS AND METHOD RELATED TO SAME, issued on Oct. 16, 2001 to Singer discloses a system of medical records management based on searches of common elements such as medical terms. U.S. Pat. No. 6,263,330, entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF DATA FILES, issued on Jul. 17, 2001 to Bessette provides a network system for storage of medical records. The records are stored in a database on a server. Each record includes two main parts, namely a collection of data elements containing information of a medical nature for a certain individual, and a plurality of pointers providing addresses or remote locations where other medical data for that particular individual resides.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2002/0007284, entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IMPLEMENTING A GLOBAL MASTER PATIENT INDEX, published on Jan. 17, 2002 and filed by Schurenberg et al., discloses a global master patient index (GMPI). The GMPI performs functions such as locating patient records, locating duplicate records for a selected patient, printing a selected patient record with all its duplicate patient records, reconciling potential duplicate patient records found while searching and retrieving a patient's record, final reconciliation (certification) of suspected duplicate patients records, maintaining a persistent relationship between patient records in the GMPI, and maintaining a reconciliation audit trail.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2001/0051879, entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING SECURITY FOR A DISTRIBUTED HEALTHCARE APPLICATION, filed by Johnson et al., discloses a health data network that allows storage of patient record information in a parent/child relationship using a global master patient index to integrate patient record information used either by multiple facility healthcare organizations or by a single business with multiple sites or computer databases.